Mineo Osumi

Mineo Osumi (1 May 1876-5 February 1941) was Minister of the Navy of Japan from December 1931 to March 1932 (succeeding Kiyokazu Abo and preceding Keisuke Okada) and from January 1933 to March 1936 (succeeding Keisuke Okada and preceding Osami Nagano. Osumi was a proponent of the expansion of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and he was killed when his plane was shot down over China by Chinese guerrillas in 1941.

Biography
Mineo Osumi was born on 1 May 1876 in Kochi Prefecture, Japan, but he grew up in Aichi Prefecture. He served as the chief navigator of Imperial Japanese Navy cruiser Matsushima during the Russo-Japanese War, and he served as a naval attache to the German Empire from 1909 to 1911 and to France from 1918 to 1921. On 1 December 1920, he was promoted to Rear Admiral and then to Vice Admiral in 1924, being given command of the Yokosuka Naval District in 1929. He refused to take sides on the issue of the Washington Naval Treaty as Naval Minister, but he supported Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations and the expansion of the navy. On 5 February 1941, his navy transport plane was shot down by Chinese guerrillas as he was flying to Hainan to fight in the Second Sino-Japanese War.